Monthly Archives: November 2017

The United States has never been on my ‘must visit’ list. The awe and wonder has long since gone with the US continually in the limelight; splashed across the media for this reason or that. The States felt some how over familiar, un-exotic, and ‘the easy way’. Gid had occasionally posed the idea of going east across South America, denying that it would be his first choice for our way home; just waiting for me to bite, I felt.

But an hour or so after we arrived in LA, I was hooked. It didn’t have one or two beach volleyball courts, there were twelve of them lined up waiting for players. Roller blades, bikes, skateboards all zoomed past; the place was alive. As we cycled toward our host’s place in Korea Town, Gid pointed out the Hollywood sign on the hill in the distance. What a perfect start! Hollywood boulevard, Sunset boulevard, Route 66 here we come.

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We were lucky to be staying with an enthusiastic local, Oscar, who was generous enough to take us on a guided tour for a day. Whizzing about on our bikes we visited the Griffiths Observatory, downtown, rode the metro with our bikes (yah boo LT) … and had the best tacos in town.

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Under our own steam we wandered along Hollywood Boulevard, spotting the stars names in the pavement sidewalk. Besides a spattering of tourists like us, there were scores of movie wannabes, in costume, hustling for paid photo shoots. Instead, more economically, Clare opted to lie down with Rod Stewart and Burt Lancaster, and fire off selfies. She passed on Donald Trump though: he used to host a talk show, apparently. What have we missed?

Wide, long, hot, dusty streets – check

Grids, intersections, traffic lights – check

Glitzy mall – check

Elaborate Christmas decorations – check

Spanish spoken maybe more than English – check

Stretch limos, Ferraris; and Porsche runabouts – check

Movie cameras in use on the street – check

Black & white squad cars – check

Big red fire engines blasting through intersections – check

Palms and bougainvillea – check

Huge pickups with nothing in and rumbly engines – check

Empty lots and abandoned shops – check

Body beautiful workouts on the beach – check

Joggers left, right, and centre – check

A pier in San Diego reminded us of Worthing

Gid was struck by the poverty evident amongst the splendour. Street walkers riffled through the bins, make-shift shelters filled hidey holes, and tents appeared along the concrete floodways. Shanty towns, where structures were covered with random sheets of plastic, that could have been straight out of India, filled areas of wasteland. Such ad-hoc homes were especially evident when we followed the cycleway along the enormous culverted drain – and each tent seemed to have a bicycle or several.

We’d chosen Cycle Route 90 – the USA Southern Tier coast to coast crossing, because during the fall it’s run as a commercial trip. Local ‘guided trips’ we’ve done before are picked for their scenery, points of interest and traffic free roads so we hoped this would be too. We would be cycling November to February, so we hoped staying well south would avoid frozen toes (and many mountains too).

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To reach Route 90 we rode down the California coast, with eye watering camping costs but beautiful coastal views, to the starting point in San Diego, then turned eastwards and set out through California towards the desert. To our relief, camping costs plummeted, often being free and the occasional motel became affordable.

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This was a different USA entirely. Small towns, widely spaced in the hills and sands. The days are short, so we often cycled through sunset, and occasionally met the dawn when we crawled out of the tent in the morning. Most days we meet at least one other cycle tourist, although most of them seem to be heading for South America rather than California. It’s a playground for the local big cities too. Motor bikes, quad bikes, buggies: big, medium and small career around sending out plumes of sand up behind them. Endlessly, we’re passed by towed buggies and all-terrain vehicles behind monster pickups and huge RVs. Unfortunately, while American freight drivers (“semis” mostly) seem responsible enough in passing or waiting, the RV boys seem unconscious of their width, bow-wave and tail suck; it’s a good job the roads are mostly wide and lightly trafficked.

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With lots of space to leave things where they are, and a climate that’s kind to buildings, metalwork and even mummified roadkill, there’s lots of photogenic old stuff to take pictures of.

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One disappointment so far, is that wildlife seems very timid. We’ve not seen much although, the humming birds were rather special and much too fast for our cameras . On the highway, there’s not even roadkill, until just recently a couple of flat & desiccated coyotes. Maybe morelive beasties will turn up further east.

Smaller, browner, pelican

Seen in the desert, medium size.

There must be loads more of these than we see.

Writing this, here we are in Wickenburg, AZ, a town of cowboys and rodeos – team roping capital of the world, it claims. But frustratingly, it’s Thanksgiving Day, so no rodeo today. Worse still, the local shops have run out of turkey, except for whole frozen ones. Chicken will have to do, cooked on the camping stove on the veranda of this comfy motel.

‘South Island, Mum. You’ve got to visit the South Island. The North Island is all very beautiful, but it’s just like Wales. You’ve seen it all before . It’s the South Island that’s spectacular.’ These sentiments were reiterated several times but so were the warnings of steep windy roads and heavy traffic. The main highway from Christchurch is closed due to the November 2016 earthquake. This diverted all the commercial traffic up the smaller twisty central highway. ‘No place for a bicycle’ we were warned. Mind you, we’ve had a lot of warnings like that.

We went for a compromise. An outdoor pursuits instructor in Christchurch had recommended the South Island’s northern coastline going from Picton via Nelson west out towards the Golden Bay. He reckoned it was one of his favorite rides; it also passed the test of my daughter who had liked it out there. So having flown into Wellington, we took the ferry and buses out to Takaka, and cycled a little further west to get a better view of Golden Bay before turning around to start our New Zealand leg for real.

Our route back took us over the Takaka pass. At 791m it’s a mere babe of a mountain alongside the many big sisters reaching 3000 m or more. Two such snow capped beauties we admired whilst looking out across Havelock’s inlet.

The Tasman’s Great Taste Trail, where we admired the views from the top of the ridge before sweeping back down to the coast and crossing the river, was our first experience of New Zealand’s many bike trails. The ferry from Mapua delivered us to the deserted estuary beach where sand and shingle replaced gravel tracks and bitumen, as we wound our way across the deserted island.

Thus we’d started our NZ trip but the honeymoon period was over. Half a dozen rain spots was all we’d felt so far but that was about to change. The Scottish game we call it having spent two weeks of 2014 cycling up to John O’Groats with the on/ off rain kit syndrome. Cycle for ten mins; it’s raining, on goes the rain kit. Thirty mins later it’s dry; off comes the rain kit. Thirty mins later – it’s raining- on goes the rain kit. Ten mins later it’s stopped, off comes the rain kit. This interspersed with whole days of continuous rain was what we were in for.

Official advice on the New Zealand bike trails site is, ‘take rain proofs and a sense of humor – you never know you might enjoy cycling in the rain’. Coffee culture in NZ where even tiny villages have a café that we could cower in certainly helped.

We’re no lightweights when it comes to outdoor pursuits in rain having spent five whole days in continuous rain on a sea kayaking trip in Alaska and four days hiking in a rain forest in Vancouver Island but cycling is possibly the trickiest because of the changing levels of exertion required to climb hills and mountains, pedal along the flat, or freeze on long downhills. In heavy rain it’s easy to keep cool but in drizzle and light rain it’s not long before you are wondering if it’s leaky rain clothes or sweat that’s soaking you to the bone. When you can see them the views in the rain are very atmospheric with trees and hill tops poking up above the clouds.

New Zealands Wool and Sheep Museum

Nearest we got to seeing a wild one….

Most small towns still have a corner hotel

Agriculture everywhere

The must do Tongariro Alpine Crossing, with its stunning snow capped volcano, craters, sulphur lakes and alpine views was fantastic. It’s a 19.4km one day hike across a mountains pass. Boots not bikes, is definitely counted as a rest day but I’m not sure our legs were convinced! The day started in perfect sunshine but this didn’t last. A couple of hours into the walk the cloud closed in. Fortunately we’d already snapped away at Mount Ngauruhoe and we’re lucky that the cloud cover lifted enough for us to enjoy views of the Red Crater and Emerald lakes. The alpine views on the downward path swept before us like flicker cards presenting the scene as the cloud, and by now drizzle, wafted past.

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Calamity! 19.4km afoot makes for a pretty tiring day, and Clare dozed off in the shuttle bus on the way home. As she snored, her bag fell over, and her battered, cracked, scraped, but still working camera ended up in a puddle inside the bag. End of camera.

A couple of days later we tackled the Timber Trail. It’s an easy grade 2/3 mountain bike ride, which was an obvious choice to get a taste of a full length bike trail, especially with the added attraction of crossing eight suspension bridges.

The original train bridge having fallen down…

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Ongarue Spiral – It loops around through a tunnel, to gain height.

A solid day of rain before we started ensured the mud levels were at their best. Sections of it were slow and exasperating as we slipped and slid along the track, frequently shoving the bikes through squelching mud. Information boards presented the history of the logging industry in the area while the two days of sunshine, and respite from the rain, kept our spirits up.

Our last few days of riding in New Zealand continued in the same vein – pretty hilly and rather damp. There’s an old saying about no bad weather, just bad gear, but it does slow you down. Fortunately we still made it to the camera shop in time to pick up the ordered replacement. And on our very last riding day the hills receded into the distance as we dropped down a scenic gorge, then traversed agricultural plains – with no headwind and no rain! We never quite made it to Auckland, meeting up with emigrated old friends Sally & Stuart near Hamilton. We decided to duck the logistical and timescale challenges of getting in and out of Auckland with boxed bikes, and gratefully accepted a lift to the airport, ready (really?) for America.